Mark Reviews Movies: SKIN (2019)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 25, 2019

Some opening text informs us that Skin is "inspired by a true story." At a certain point, one wonders if writer/director Guy Nattiv chose the right part of this story.

To be sure, the transformation of Bryon Widner (Jamie Bell), who was raised by a group of white supremacists but discovered his conscience, is noteworthy, if only because it shows that racism is learned and, therefore, it also can be unlearned. Here, that process is one of extremes, in which a teenager is gruesomely attacked, at least three people are killed because of their race, and the lives of those whom our protagonist loves are directly threatened.

The lesson is supposed to be that Bryon learns the errors of his views and ways. Because Nattiv's focus never genuinely confronts the consequences of the character's hateful and inherently violent ideology, though, his change seems more out of self-preservation than anything else. That's fine enough, one supposes, since the change happens regardless of the apparent motivation. The motive matters in terms of drama, because that will define what we actually take away from this story. In this case, the stakes are always about what happens to Bryon, not how his views of other people and society are challenged, shown to be false, and ultimately overcome.

The frustrating thing is that Nattiv provides Bryon and the narrative with a character who could serve that role. He's Daryle Jenkins (Mike Colter), an activist who publicly names and shames members of racist organizations, hoping to back them into a tight enough corner that they'll turn on their comrades. This character, given only a handful of scenes in Bryon's story (and only one, really, that doesn't directly involve the protagonist), is immediately intriguing, and he only grows more fascinating as scattered details about his work, his goals, and his past come to light.

Daryle is, in theory, in a better position as an entryway into this story for the audience than Bryon, who is so entrenched with the white-supremacist group at the beginning of the story that we don't see a way out for him—or even a desire to find one on his part. More to the point, Daryle is the one who better relates the idea that people can change, mostly because it's his work and partly because of his own experience. In terms of drama, he's also the more active agent in bringing about Bryon's change, as opposed to the man himself, who's primarily a passive figure in his own story—reacting to the severity of events and the people around him, instead of doing anything about those things.

The story we get, though, is Bryon's—entirely and almost exclusively. As a kid, he was a runaway from two alcoholic parents and one abusive one. He was taken in by Fred (Bill Camp), who calls himself "Hammer", and Shareen (Vera Farmiga), who insists that everyone calls her "Ma," and raised as their son.

The two run a "social club," a white-supremacist group that's entrenched in Norse history and mythology, in addition to hating anyone and everyone who doesn't look like them. Their ranks are filled with young men and women who were in a similar position as Bryon, whose body is covered in symbols of coded or blatant racism (The painful removal of the ink becomes an on-the-nose symbol of his transformation). Fred and Shareen are always on the lookout for others, including children, whom they can groom into their worldview.

Nattiv simply but convincingly creates this insular world of the group, in which membership is more than a matter of hatred. It's also a matter of it being the only stable thing some of these people have ever known (although, as a result, he also kind of lets some of its members off the hook by way of their pasts).

That becomes the source of conflict for Bryon. He meets Julie (Danielle Macdonald), the mother of three daughters and the daughter of a KKK member who has gotten away from her family's racism (She still has her daughters sing at meetings for such groups, which doesn't make much sense but does provide the start of a plot), and falls for her. To stay with her, as well as the girls, and potentially start a new family, Bryon decides to leave the "club," although it's going to take some time.

The rest of the story is fairly predictable, although that wouldn't matter if the movie went deeper than a passing examination of how racism begins, how it's fomented, how it can be confronted, and how it might be defeated—at least in the mind of one person. Instead, though, the conflict resides entirely in violence, from Bryon helping to burn down a mosque, to witnessing the murders of survivors from the building, and to becoming a target of those whom he once considered family.

There is a real Widner, who's presented in the coda (alongside a reminder that there's also a real and even more interesting Jenkins) as proof that at least the core of this story actually happened. Skin primarily cares about that superficial truth. The core of what this story represents, though, remains mostly unexplored.

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